11 Reasons Why I Prefer D&D 4E

[CapnZapp]

The single best improvement in 4E, to my mind is

Rituals.

Having them (and having them separated from a certain wizard level, as you say) adds immensely to the storytelling power of the game.

I'm not yet there, but I imagine less high-level complexity will become a strong second over time. (This would include at least three of your points: Less-complex high-level spellcasters, Easier high-level PC creation & Easier high-level NPC creation)

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As for dislikes,

My current pet peeve is monster hit points: as in how some get absurd heapings (i.e. most monsters) and others get absurdly few (i.e. minions).

The concept of minions (or mooks) is great for a certain style of play, but it ruins verisimilitude for others. Having them in the game by default (as opposed to some secondary option) means the game shuts out many gamers. Having minions fosters a heavy elitism, where some people (and monsters) just are better, more worthy to live, than others. Not to speak of absurd consequences, where "minion people" die from injuries everybody else would consider a scratch only.

Combine this with the complaints fights take too long against regular monsters, and I believe you have yourself a mistake on the part of WotC.

Currently, my solution (after all, the best complaints are those coupled with a suggested solution) is to halve hit points for standard monsters (and assign the same amount to former minions).

If nothing else, this will make elites and solos truly stand-outs, which I too think is good for the game.

I might list other complaints about the game, but those are of such a nature, they could well be met by "okay, but why don't you go play another game then?".

Regards,
Zapp

 

[Monkey Boy]

I wanted to focus on the actual rules themselves.

I think of 4e as more than just the rules. There is the whole sideshow taking place that leaves a bad taste. To be honest though I was just trying to fill out my 11 things and was running out of rules issues. I like 4e, its a nifty system. If it wasn't for the longer combat lengths I'd be a very happy gamer.

What do you mean with this?

Me - 'It's Bob the clerics turn.'
Bob 'I use Clarion call of the Astral sea' then I spend an action point and use 'Knights of unyielding valor.'
Me - Ok, just what exactly do those powers do?

I was being a little facetious with the golden-spray wyvern adept comment. As a general rule the powers are well named. Some spring out as unintuitively named. Its a fluff not a crunch issue.

 

[Monkey Boy]

My current pet peeve is monster hit points: as in how some get absurd heapings (i.e. most monsters) and others get absurdly few (i.e. minions).

The concept of minions (or mooks) is great for a certain style of play, but it ruins verisimilitude for others. Having them in the game by default (as opposed to some secondary option) means the game shuts out many gamers. Having minions fosters a heavy elitism, where some people (and monsters) just are better, more worthy to live, than others. Not to speak of absurd consequences, where "minion people" die from injuries everybody else would consider a scratch only.

Combine this with the complaints fights take too long against regular monsters, and I believe you have yourself a mistake on the part of WotC.

Currently, my solution (after all, the best complaints are those coupled with a suggested solution) is to halve hit points for standard monsters (and assign the same amount to former minions).

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

 

[vagabundo]

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

I've seen this as a problem initially, but it seems to have gone away. My players are becoming more tactically aware and are doing a lot more damage per round.

I think in the long term, once the skill-set of players increases, the current HPs will be challenging but not over the top. For the moment I'm taking it easy on them, a little - I usually lob a third off the high HP monsters.

 

[D'karr]

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

I guess that this is a case of different strokes for different folk. This is the kind of thing that would never even come up as a deal breaker for me.

The only time I've seen fights take "too long", which is a completely subjective measure, was when the party decided that they would have 2 controllers, 2 leaders and a defender. In addition the encounter was against brutes and soldiers, with no minions.

Without a striker the party will take longer to whittle down the opposition. I simply resolved that by killing the creatures when I felt it was appropriate, which is a completely subjective value judgement.

So that specific soldier might have had 10%-20% less HP and that brute might have had 20%-30% less HP but in the end the fight stayed exciting. So it was no big deal.

This situation is one that the DM has complete control over. My recommendation, before the fight starts to drag, go ahead and start ending it. My solution was to simply drop some HP as necessary from the creatures and then I awarded 10-50 less XP per creatures to signify not the standard level of challenge.

This was completely ad-hoc and posed no significant difficulty on my part. The players did not notice the difference at all. Since then I've strongly hinted that having a striker in their group would probably be a very beneficial thing.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

No long-term advance planning for PC character development.

I'm not sure this is true, as stat requirements almost make it more critical that you careful consider future feat and power preferences before you assign stats. Retraining does eliminate a lot of feat planning, admittedly.

No class is useless in a specific fight.

Heck, yes. Best feature of 4E IMO -- plus 4E significantly increased the importance of team tactics, which is a good feature IMO.

Easier high-level PC creation.

Mostly, yes. I'd argue that it's much easier for high-level spellcasters, and much harder for high-level melee characters.

Fighters are now actually interesting.

3E Fighters were interesting too, if you actually took advantage of the range of feats -- orders of magnitude better than prior edition fighters. I'll grant that 4E fighters are now a step more interesting than even their 3E counterparts, though.

Less-complex high-level spellcasters.

Goodness, yes.

Rituals.

I like these mechanics, but I'm disappointed with the number, and the fact that rituals have essentially killed the prior "clever use of flexible spells" that you could do. It's fun to play "101 uses for a 1st level spell" -- not quite as fun now.

Skill challenges.

Frankly, I see this as a mechanic that isn't unique to 4E -- easy enough to port it back to 3E (and even 2E's NWPs with some further tweaking). The fact that they screwed up the initial SC release in the core rules still irqs me.

Minions.

Again, not a unique-to-4E mechanic. Take almost any 3E monster, reduce to 1 hp = minion.

Easier high-level NPC creation.

Yes and no. If you weren't anal about having every single spell, feat, and skill point accounted for, high level NPCs in 3E aren't really that hard -- you just put together those items that you need for play and wing the rest.

Easier monster creation/modification.

Creation, yes. I'm not convinced that systematic modification is a strength of 4E. Point modification is neither significantly easier or harder than before.

In-depth discussion on building encounters and monster roles.

I wouldn't say that the concepts are any better or worse, but certainly including the design discussion in the DMG is one of the smartest decisions made for that book, and results in a significantly more useful DMG than prior editions (where the DMG was just the place to srtore magic items).

My criticisms of 4E: Missing classes plus limited rituals/spells and magic items compared to prior editions core rules make the initial release feel incomplete; changes to the base "fluff" of D&D feel like "change for change sake" that I have to undue to match my personal vision of the game. Finally, character creation is much more role constraining (pending the release of supplements) -- that's both a bug and a feature.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Are my players just gods of combat or something? Fights seem pretty fast for us. Solos are a little boring once we all run out of encounter powers, but otherwise, were good.

 

[D'karr]

Crossposted from my blog.

• No long-term advance planning for PC character development.
• Easier high-level PC creation.
• Fighters are now actually interesting.
• Less-complex high-level spellcasters.
• No class is useless in a specific fight.
• Rituals.
• Skill challenges.
• Minions.
• Easier high-level NPC creation.
• Easier monster creation/modification.
• In-depth discussion on building encounters and monster roles.

By all means, please feel free to debate.

I agree with almost all of these. My biggest agreement comes from those points that boil down to Ease with which a DM can modify the game or an adventure. My preparation time is now spent on things that matter to the excitement of the game. Things like adventure design and new and improved plot hooks for the campaign. Gone is the tediousness of attempting to balance encounters for my group.

From your list there are two of those that I just wish they would have added more of. I would have liked to have seen more rituals on the core books. I would have liked at least one additional controller class, and I would have liked to have the Wizard have a little more granularity, specially in spell selection. These are things that I'm actually house-ruling, which is no longer a chore either.

As far as complaints, I've only got two so far.

• Low Level Monster Variety -- I really wish the Monster Manual would have had about 4-5 more creatures for low level play. Every time we have played a low level adventure we've fought kobolds or goblins. Some more variety would have been really nice.
  
• More At-Will Powers as levels increase -- The limitation on 2 at-will powers seems rather contrived. Specially since the economy of actions in 4e already prevents abuse. I'm going to house rule for my campaign that players can select 2 at-will powers at 1st level. One additional one at 5th level and another one at 15th level. Since they can only use them once per turn anyway, unless they use an action point, I can't see much problem with letting them have all the at-will powers for their class as they increase in level.

One major thing that I really love about 4e:

• Ease with which a new player can jump in and start playing

I have found 4e to be a huge breath of fresh air. My wife now games with us on a regular basis. She was a complete newbie to gaming. When we played 3e, she played a rogue and had quite a hard time keeping track of everything. She has mentioned several times that now she is actually excited to play because she does not feel like she is lost trying to find what she should do. Everything is spelled out rather clearly on her sheet. To me that is a major reason to prefer 4e.

 

[Henry]

This is my hang up as well and is almost a deal breaker. The fights have taken too long and are boring the hell out of me. Fighting goblins shouldn't take this long! I will be implementing half HP for monsters in my current game, hopefully that will fix things for my group.

The one thing to watch out for in this is pre-published encounters with minions; personally I'd advise reducing the number of minions slightly, because an encounter with a half-dozen minions, that each take two or three hits to drop one, could spell disaster for your party whereas the as-written encounter might be intended as an even or a hard challenge.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The one thing to watch out for in this is pre-published encounters with minions; personally I'd advise reducing the number of minions slightly, because an encounter with a half-dozen minions, that each take two or three hits to drop one, could spell disaster for your party whereas the as-written encounter might be intended as an even or a hard challenge.

I would have thought the opposite. Fighting monsters with lots of hit points might get boring if nothing "new" happens, but with Minions you always have the thrill of knowing - if I hit, it's gone. And this results in a lot more actions going on. Ultimately, 4 Minions probably take the same time to take down as an equal level monster, but you have the satisfaction of dropping foes more often.
Or is this entirely subjective?